Apple asked a U.S. appeals court on Monday to overturn a trade
tribunal’s decision which forced it to remove blood-oxygen reading
technology from its Apple Watches, in order to avoid a ban on its
U.S. smartwatch imports.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal
Circuit heard arguments from the tech giant, medical monitoring
technology company Masimo, and the U.S. International Trade
Commission over the ITC’s 2023 ruling that Apple Watches violated
Masimo’s patent rights in pulse oximetry technology. […]
Apple attorney Joseph Mueller of WilmerHale told the court on
Monday that the decision had wrongly “deprived millions of Apple
Watch users” of Apple’s blood-oxygen feature. A lawyer for Masimo,
Joseph Re of Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear, countered that Apple was
trying to “rewrite the law” with its arguments.
The judges questioned whether Masimo’s development of a competing
smartwatch justified the ITC’s ruling. Apple has told the appeals
court that the ban was improper because a Masimo wearable device
covered by the patents was “purely hypothetical” when Masimo filed
its ITC complaint in 2021. […]
Mueller told the court on Monday that the ban was unjustified
because Masimo only had prototypes of a smartwatch with pulse
oximetry features when it had filed its ITC complaint. Re
responded that Apple was wrong to argue that a “finished product”
was necessary to justify the ITC’s decision.
This whole thing started with the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 1 in 2023. I’m very surprised that we’re just two months away from the Series 11 and Ultra 3 in 2025 and it still isn’t settled. And to be clear, while it’s technically an “import ban”, all Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 have the blood oxygen sensors. Units sold in the US after December 2023 simply have the feature disabled in software.